To school, safely?

One often sees children, sandwiched together in an autorickshaw, their bags slung on the sides of the vehicle. The autorickshaw is an unstable vehicle and if overloaded, safety is impossible. HANIFA GHOSH describes the daily risks children face on their way to school.

Time was when parents ran around to admit their children in schools and once this task was completed, they heaved a sigh of relief and considered a great responsibility over. Today the real problems begin after the admission process is over.

Parents are ambitious and choose the best schools for their children and distance is no deterrent. Sending children to schools within a radius of five km is no more a practice though many schools mention in their prospectus that they would prefer to admit children who reside within this radius.

In a world where students are known to commute even by air (private helicopters are used in Australia and in some parts of the U.S.), it appears absurd to hesitate to send a child from one part of Chennai to another. But the practical difficulties and dangers should be considered.

School buses are the best option available as there is accountability and schools take on the responsibility of taking children to school and bringing them back home safely.

Well-trained, experienced drivers are deputed for the job and invariably there are conductors who take care of the children while they board the bus and alight from it. The only problem with school buses is that children sometimes have to leave their homes very early and return quite late, as these buses need to ply more than one trip to meet the demand. With very small children, there is yet another difficulty that adds to the problems faced by parents. As school buses cannot pick up children from their homes, parents have to take them to and pick them up from convenient points. The anxiety, that children may miss the bus or on the return trip may try to cross the roads and reach home on their own, is there and parents have to rush to reach the point in time.

Often parents try to solve these problems by seeking the services of private vans and autorickshaws only to realise how unscrupulously mercenary such services are.

In a van that can comfortably seat 20 children, sometimes up to 40 are dumped. Driving is rash as most of these drivers are inexperienced youngsters (the more experienced ones are not ready to work for the pittance that the owners of these vehicles are willing to pay!).

Often there are no conductors or assistants to take charge of the van door and the little children are left to fend for themselves.

I realised the risk involved in allowing our children to travel in such conditions when my daughter had a providential escape in 1995 when she was just seven years old. Returning home from school by a private van, she had fallen asleep on her seat near the door.

The van had a customary stop just before the Kilpauk cemetery but as that day happened to be a bandh, the driver was skipping stops. There was no assistant in the van and one of the children, in her enthusiasm to assist, and ignorant of the rescheduled stops, opened the van door just as the van took a sharp turn without slowing down... and out tumbled my little daughter who was fast asleep.

The driver of the PTC bus following close behind luckily saw the mishap, slammed on his brakes and managed to stop the bus just a few inches away from the child.

We the parents knew nothing about what had happened because the guilty driver brought the child home just mumbling that she had fallen while trying to alight. There was no open injury and my daughter who was in shock could not explain. The whole truth came out when parents of the other children in the van started calling up to find out how the child was.

What followed was x-rays, a CT scan that showed a clot in her brain, tense moments, prayers and the valuable advice of our family physician. We were told that if the child did not develop fits within a month, she would be fine and we kept our fingers crossed.

God saw us through the difficult time but I am yet to get over my fear of private vans. Nor should you ever permit auto drivers to take more than four or five children.

We see children, up to 10 of them in one autorickshaw with bags and lunch bags hanging from the sides, protruding at impossible angles. The autorickshaw is basically an unstable vehicle and thus overloaded, safety is impossible.

Motorised tricycle rickshaws that pack their unstable vehicles with school children are also not safe.

These vehicles drive at high speeds though their primitive brakes are not meant for such speeds.

The owners and drivers of all such vehicles are brazen, as whatever laws exist are not enforced and rarely are they booked for overloading.

A senior police official said that the Motor Vehicles Act was silent on this issue but errant drivers could be made to toe the line under the Hackney Carriage Act.

The Regional Transport Authority specifies the maximum number of passengers that can travel in a vehicle.

The traffic police and the Regional Transport Officers are thinking of ways to control this menace.

Meanwhile advisory letters have been sent to schools requesting them to discuss the issue with parents seeking their cooperation to put an end to such risky means of transport to and from school.

Parents are ultimately responsible for their children and if parents make up their minds, they can, with the help of the traffic police and the school authorities, ensure safe transport for their children.

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